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by Susan Smith - Managing EditorEach GIS Weekly Review delivers to its readers news concerning the latest developments in the GIS industry, GIS product and company news, featured downloads, customer wins, and coming events, along with a selection of other articles that we feel you might find interesting. Brought to you by GISCafe.com. If we miss a story or subject that you feel deserves to be included, or you just want to suggest a future topic, please contact us! Questions? Feedback? Click here. Thank you!

4. New layers tab is like a smart legend that will only show you the symbology of the legend. You can turn off and on layers and imagery, and it complements a traditional table of contents.

3. Ability to change symbols by doing a search. Far more efficient to search for symbols than browsing thru 20,000 symbols.

2. Time – it is easier to make temporal maps with GIS.

1. Fast basemaps – how ArcMap displays the map. Create new basemap layer, select every layer that you want to participate in in this basemap layer. A continuous redraw results as you pan the map.

Editing becomes easier in ArcMap 9.4 where you can create features by picking a symbol from a list to draw on a map. The same templates created in Desktop can be used in ArcGIS Server, and information can be gathered from the Web. Web editing supports the idea of web collaboration, including systematic inventory, crowd sourcing, citizen/government interaction, collaborative design, and user generated content.

Each year, ESRI rewards a school for their work in some area of GIS. Thanks to ESRI educational guru, Charlie Fitzpatrick, thousands of schools now weave GIS into their curriculum. Joppatowne High School, Harford County Public Schools, Maryland, won the award this year. Educators who would like to help are encouraged to become “GeoMentors, ” part of a joint effort between ESRI and the National Geographic Society.

Coursework for Joppatown students included GIS, application based training, advanced tools such as surface analysis and routing analysis. They used these tools to solve the problem of elementary schools in their county being over capacity. The Board of Education needed to decided to build a school in either of two locations. Based on the Joppatown students’ analysis, a site was selected. Winners included: teacher: Jacqueline Smith, Geomentor: Eric Cromwell,

Hernando De Soto, Peruvian economist, gave a moving commentary on “Mapping the Invisible,” based on his idea of building cadastral systems in the developing world. He has written a book entitled The Mystery of Capital, which holds to the premise that countries that don’t have land cadastre are poor.

“We are trying to help countries participate in the global economy, and the starting point is property,” claimed De Soto. Two-thirds of the world doesn’t have property law.

De Soto gave the example of Egypt, where the vast majority of real estate is outside the legal market. 92 percent of the population holds its real estate assets extralegally. The value of extralegal assets in Egypt exceeds US$248 billion which is 50 times greater than all foreign direct investors and 50 times greater than all the foreign aid ever poured into Egypt. The majority of assets are already there but are not liquid. “The solution is to make this dead capital live capital, that paper needs to correspond to the asset. If things are not on the record, what do you have to do to get on the record? When I went to Indonesia they said since we don’t realize we have these

shadowy assets, what’s the starting point – how do you get something like this across to politicians?” In some countries it takes 17 years to get property ownership on the record.

“When I was walking around in Bali, I always knew I was changing owners because a different dog barked,” said De Soto. “How do you go from informal indexes to formal indexes?”

Thomas Jefferson understood that property is a revolution. De Soto claimed that developing countries should be a big market for us. Land records are one layer of geographic knowledge, and countries who are accountable to the people who own properties have better environments and are sustained from one generation to another.

What incentivizes a politician to make the change? According to De Soto, “the map is more than technology but it’s the beginning to the solution of most of the problems they have today.”

Top News of the Week

LizardTech, a division of Celartem, Inc. and a provider of software solutions for managing and distributing digital content, announced the release of its latest product called LizardTech LiDAR Compressor at the 2009 ESRI International User Conference in San Diego. This brand new product enables users to turn giant point cloud data into efficient MrSID files that retain 100 percent of the raw data at just 25 percent of the file size. Unlike raw LAS or ASCII data, LiDAR files compressed to MrSID are easily managed resources from which derivatives can be extracted over and over again.

Ricoh America’s Corporation, a provider of digital office equipment and business solution cameras, announced at the ESRI User Conference in San Diego the release of major hardware and firmware enhancements to its 500SE GPS-ready camera.

To provide the best solution for GIS workflows that require quality images, Ricoh has announced the new SE-2 GPS module line for the 500SE to provide superior GPS reception, capabilities and accuracy. The SE-2 modules, designed by EKA Technologies, Inc, incorporates state-of-the-are GPS components into a small, power-efficient, and ruggedized housing that attaches to the side of the 500SE, providing an all-in-one geo-imaging solution.

IceWEB, Inc. through its wholly owned subsidiary InLINE Corporation, announced that it will release its IPLICITY 2.0 Enterprise Platform (IEP), a truly revolutionary product, destined to differentiate IceWEB from its competition in the unified storage architecture marketplace. Additionally, the Company features its newly designed InLINE MLP III (Mobile Lightweight Portable) product with 32TB of on-the-fly storage.

Acquisitions, Agreements, Alliances

ITT Corporation, the developers of ENVI image processing and analysis software, and

ESRI announced a strategic partnership to integrate their respective software technologies. This integration delivers advanced, high-performance image processing and analysis capabilities to the ArcGIS platform and expands the distribution of these new technologies globally.

Microsoft Corp. and

ESRI launched Fusion Core Solution, a public safety and homeland security solution architecture, at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego. Formerly referred to as FusionX, Fusion Core Solution was designed by the two industry leaders to help public safety and homeland security professionals more effectively prevent today's evolving physical and virtual security threats. In addition, the solution strengthens the ability of government agencies to prepare, assess, and respond to natural disasters.

Dewberry and

James W. Sewall Company have formed a partnership to offer expanded services to their clients in government and industry. Under the teaming arrangement, Dewberry is integrating its broad GIS and mapping technology capabilities with Sewall’s expertise in renewable energy, forestry, and natural resources consulting.